My Motley Meanderings

I did something I have never done before

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:10:43 GMT

I pre-ordered the American hardback edition of a book specifically for the cover art. This is a cover that has been much discussed and often reviled in parts of my friendslist. The author has publicly disclaimed responsibility for the design. I think it is brilliant.

The story (which I'm greatly looking forward to reading) is a homage to a novel by one of science fiction's grand masters that has itself been the subject of a great deal of criticism and controversy over the years. Its cover art is a homage to the cover Michael Whelan designed for possibly the best-known edition of the original book.

Can you guess what it is yet? Here is a big clue. (I dare you to follow that link even if you've already guessed the answer!)

That's right, I bought the American edition of Charlie Stross's latest novel, Saturn's Children!

Here is a picture of the cover in its full cheesetastic splendour, next to my rather faded paperback copy of Friday.

Here is the British edition of Saturn's Children for comparison. To me, that design says, "hard SF space opera, possibly following on from Charlie's previous space operas." It doesn't say "fun homage to Friday with a sexbot as the protagonist."

My wish has been answered

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:11:31 GMT

Madness are doing a Manchester gig this December!

What's wrong with this picture?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:34:56 GMT

Madness recently put on three shows in London showcasing songs from their new album, The Liberty of Norton Folgate. The clips I've seen on YouTube look brilliant and I really wanted to go, but they were all mid-week and I decided it wasn't quite worth taking two days off work and spending a lot of time and money getting there and back. I hope they decide to take the show on tour later this year.

The consolation prize for people who couldn't make it to an actual gig was that you could buy a recording from the sound desk. In the past these recordings have taken the form of a couple of audio CDs in a nice case. This time round they decided instead to sell a bunch of sound files, ~~images, video clips, etc.~~ on a USB wrist band. Mine arrived today and it's a natty little thing, though I'm not quite sure what advantage it has over a data CD. There is one small problem. Here is what is on it. A single text file called "Click Here for Help" that contains the following text:

For help with this LIVE in a FLASH USB Wristband please contact us on [an email address]

www.aderra.co.uk

QC _ Test PASSED

Gah. I want my MP3s!

UPDATE: Ask and ye shall receive. About an hour after posting this entry someone from Aderra (the company that made the wristband) emailed me with a link to the MP3s. Excellent customer service!

ConRunner 1 report

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:55:20 GMT

This weekend I was at ConRunner, the first in a series of biannual UK conventions for convention organisers. Of the various cons I've been to this is the one that gained me the most funny looks and bemused comments when I tried to explain it to my family and coworkers. Basically the idea was to hold a local equivalent of the long-running SMOFcon. One of the main topics of discussion was the possibility of a future UK or Netherlands Worldcon bid for 2014 or 2015.

It was held in the Britannia Hotel, Wolverhampton. This was an interesting old building with very convoluted corridors that meandered left and right, up and down, eventually doubling back on themselves and depositing you somewhere unexpected. It actually reminded me a bit of the hotel in Deep Secret. Personally I enjoy finding my way around hotels with quirky layouts, though I accept they aren't good for people with mobility problems or a poor sense of direction! It used to be the original Victorian railway hotel. The railway station has since moved a bit further away but it is still only a few minutes walk. The hotel doesn't have a car park of its own - you have to pay £6 a day to park in the station car park. I found the place easily first time by not paying much attention to the posted directions and just following the road signs for the station. Interestingly it has more than fifty chimneys on the roof - I guess at one time there was a fireplace in every guest bedroom. The staff seemed very friendly and helpful and the food was OK. The bedrooms were practical rather than luxurious, reasonably sized, and surprisingly cheap. I would recommend it for other very small cons (probably a maximum of about 100 members).

Most people arrived on Friday evening. Registration and the con bar were open but there was no official programming until Saturday morning, so we just sat around chatting until late. Perhaps next time there could be some very light programming to help break the ice, eg. a session of campfire tales about funny/weird/disastrous things that have happened at past cons (experienced conrunners have lots of these to tell, and newbie conrunners love to hear them).

Saturday morning I went out for a walk along a short stretch of the canal with watervole and somebody from a company that owns a number of conference venues, who had come along to the con to get a better idea of what conrunners are looking for in a venue. The first programme item I went to was Liaising the Devilled Eggs, about the job of hotel liaison and about hotel contracts. The point was made that although it's important to get everything down in writing, it's even more important to maintain a good working relationship with the hotel staff because if they are on your side they will bend over backwards to help when there are problems, whereas if they take a dislike to you they can make things very difficult regardless of the contract. Next I took minutes for the (possibly final) Orbital committee meeting, where a plan was agreed on how best to distribute the surplus funds. After that I went to an item about electronic vs paper distribution of progress reports and other con information.

Lunch was a buffet meal paid for by the con. Afterwards I saw three presentations from potential UK Worldcon venues. My first impressions were that the London venue is plenty big enough but may well prove too expensive; the Liverpool venue looks very interesting; and the Glasgow venue (previously used for the 1995 and 2005 Worldcons) we know can do the job but won't have improved much by 2014/2015 apart from some new hotels in the area and a big new auditorium which probably wouldn't be of much use to us. The next panel item I went to was one that I suggested: Reporting the News, about at-con newsletters; organising the production teams, technology required, non-paper alternatives, etc. Next came What to do About Tech, where Sparks talked about the benefits of simplifying and reducing tech requirements as much as possible. The final panel item of the day was Cooking the Books about finance and budgeting a con - some interesting stuff about what to do when your con gets big enough to need to be VAT registered.

I went off and found something for dinner, then went down to the public bar where we persuaded the staff to put Doctor Who on the projector screen, which was fun. RTD is really chewing up the universe he spent the last few series building. Later everyone divided into three teams to play an RPG about conrunning called If I Ran the ~~Zoo~~ Con. It was a nice idea, but unfortunately the game has some pretty major problems - it's very outdated and US-centric, the scenarios presented have very limited options and often key points of information needed to make a decision are not provided, it hovers uncomfortably somewhere between silly and serious, and it's much too long to run through a complete game in the hour allocated for it. There was a bit of discussion about rewriting it. The evening concluded with a party celebrating the 30th anniversary of Vince Docherty's introduction to SF conventions.

Sunday morning's first panel item was Logic or Logistics, about transporting stuff to and from conventions, focussing mainly on Sparks's experience with running logistics for Interaction. After that was an item about producing post-con souvenir books (johnrw is currently working on the Orbital one). Next came The Venue Quest, where auntiealice got everyone in the room to suggest one item they would want to have at an ideal con venue to demonstrate that people often have mutually exclusive requirements (my suggestion was free car-parking).

After lunch I sat through a presentation about three possible Worldcon sites in the Netherlands, before it was time for the final item of the con: discussing the possibility of bidding to host the 2014 or 2015 Worldcon in either the UK or the Netherlands. There seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm but everything is very preliminary - there is no bid committee and the idea may yet come to nothing if none of the possible venues prove financially viable. The first steps are to sort out a way for interested parties to discuss venues (as I write a Google Group has been set up), and to arrange reconnaissance visits to some or all of the six potential sites that have been discussed.

Overall it was a good con, quite small and relaxed, with a good atmosphere and many interesting topics of discussion. It was nice to meet up with friends old and new. Kudos to Steve Cooper for organising it pretty much single-handedly. I have already joined ConRunner 2, which is apparently going to be held in January 2010 at a hotel somewhere like Manchester or Sheffield.

Lintilla TODO list

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:04:34 GMT

As I think I've mentioned, I'm planning to get Lintilla back on the road and drive her for the first half of this year's LEO rally. Here is a list of things I've yet to do on her before the rally. I'll strike them out when I've done them and add more as I think of them.

Finish wire-brushing the front suspension and brake parts.
Modify the Wolseley 1500 front brake backplates to take Minor cylinders.
Change the fluid in the front dampers.
Rust-kill, prime, and paint all the front suspension and brake parts.
Weld a few patches on the sills.
Put new front wheel bearings and seals in the hubs (don't ask).
Put the front suspension back on the car.
Replace all the brake pipes.
Clean up all the slave cylinders and check the bores and seals are in good condition.
Fix the sticking handbrake cable.
Redo the rotten floor patch over the nearside crossmember end.
Remove the rest of the carpet and clean the cabin floor.
Weld up various rust holes in the floor.
Paint the cabin floor.
Paint the newly welded bits underneath.
Put the heater back together and refit it.
Put the front seats back in.
Remove the front panel.
Remove the engine block, replace the clutch and release bearing, and put the engine back in.
Put the cylinder head back on the engine (I've just had it converted to unleaded).
Rebuild and test the fuel pump.
Dismantle the carb, check it for wear, give it a good clean, and put it back together.
Clean up the distributor, replace the points, condenser, and vacuum advance unit.
Put all the ancillaries back on the engine.
Replace the exhaust pipe mounting straps and brackets.
Clean the front panel up a bit and replace it (I have obtained a less bent one to put on later but it's currently the wrong colour).
Get the engine running, timed, and tuned up.
Change the gearbox oil.
Change the back axle oil.
Oil the steering rack.
Fit halogen headlights.
Fit door mirrors.
Replace the broken nearside indicator/sidelight unit.
Fix the boot latch.
Put the front number plate back on.
Fix the windscreen washers (I think the pipes and nozzles are blocked up).
Replace the wiper blades.
Put the sill covers back on.
Bleed the brake system, hope the master cylinder doesn't need replacing.
Do something about the loose radio and speakers (cable ties and duct tape may be involved...).
Maybe replace the rear suspension bushes.
Maybe change the fluid in the rear dampers.
Maybe make and fit an instrument panel with ammeter, oil pressure gauge, water temperature gauge, and rev counter.
Maybe replace the front seat belts.
Maybe fit rear seat belts.
Maybe replace the horn.

I'm sure I will think of more stuff later...

Minor Milage

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:53:12 GMT

I have just calculated that by the time I reach the National Morris Minor Rally tonight I will have done 12,791 miles in Fenchurch since I got her back on the road less than a year ago.

This includes my daily commute, the first LEO, London five times, Glasgow, Edinburgh, the midlands several times, Middlesbrough several times, and lots of shorter trips.

Hello, my name is Inigo Skywalker...

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:44:48 GMT

I just found this brilliant Princess Bride/Star Wars mashup via a post on BoingBoing. If you haven't seen Princess Bride (one of my favourite films ever!), don't watch it because it will spoil a key scene for you.

Minor update

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:35:56 GMT

Good news:

I managed to find the time this afternoon to finish dismantling Lintilla's front suspension.
The threads on the left hand swivel pin are fine. In fact I had a closer look at the right hand one and came to the conclusion that the threads on both of them are hardly worn (and not rusty at all). A good clean, new dust seals, and regular greasing should see them last a long time yet.
The left-hand crossmember end, while far from perfect, looks easily strong enough that the torsion bar isn't in imminent danger of ripping a hole through the floor and piercing the passenger's posterior. I'm just going to put a small patch on it, repair the floor above it, then leave it alone until I'm ready to replace the sills.
The front brake cylinders and flexihoses look to be good enough to reuse after a bit of a clean (unlike the fixed pipes, several of which snapped when I tried to undo them).
I don't think the steering rack gaiters need replacing quite yet (this is good news because I really hate doing that job).

Not so good news:

I managed to break yet another nice nearly-new fluorescent inspection lamp, this time by dropping a torsion bar on it and smashing the tube inside (replacement tubes aren't available for them AFAIK). I really need to get hold of some more of those professional quality 12V inspection lamps with the clumsy-mechanic-resistant steel and rubber casing.
The left-hand eyebolt is noticeably worn at the top. I think the car must have been driven for a long time after the rubber bush between the pin and the hole disintegrated. Considering the hole doesn't tend to wear at all on the bottom, I'm going to turn the eyebolt upside down if I can to give it a second lease of life.

Minor update

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:14:56 GMT

I haven't done all that much on Lintilla since the last post about the crossmember repair. She's still at that stage where every time I try to do some work on her I discover another thing that needs fixing. The problem is worse than it was with Fenchurch because she has been abused and neglected in the past - I'm not only dealing with old worn parts and rust, but past bodges and shoddy workmanship too.

Tonight I did some more dismantling of the front suspension because I've decided to fit the bigger Wolseley 1500 front brakes to her, plus I wanted to check the condition of the trunnions and clean and paint everything while I've got it in bits. If the threads on the trunnions and swivel pins are badly worn they can suddenly fall apart and plough the front end of the car into the road, usually when you drive up a kerb or something. I'm not confident of my ability to tell how far gone they are without taking them apart and having a close look inside. The one swivel pin I've taken apart so far (the right hand side) doesn't look too bad - the bottom one is noticeably more worn than the top one, but it's not worn to the point of needing immediate replacement.

While I was working on that, I realised that the brake pipes are in a poorer condition than they initially appeared and will need replacing, plus the clutch is on the absolute limit of its adjustment and will also need replacing very soon. I only thought of looking at the clutch adjuster rod after my recent problem with Fenchurch's clutch on the way to morris1000's place. Annoyingly the engine was changed not all that many miles ago and I find it hard to believe that the mechanic failed to notice that the clutch was badly worn when he swapped it over.

I also spotted that they made a real mess of attaching the front bump stops to the inner wings, meaning they are probably a lot less effective than they should be, and at least one of the front dampers is loose. The eye bolt bushes have totally disintegrated and the pins are rather worn, but I already knew that and have got a set of Superflex polybushes and new pins ready to fit. Luckily the eyebolts themselves don't look badly worn as they are out of stock at the supplier I use. Another problem I noticed was the tie-rod on one side was rather wonky and the big washers on it were badly chewed up - I reckon it got bent in a small front-end collision some time ago and whoever repaired it just bent it back roughly straight again and didn't bother to replace the washers. I'm hoping to pick up a better one from Ray at the National rally next weekend.

One area in which I have actually made a bit of progress is that I have fitted all new straps and cushions in the front seats and they are much more comfortable now. If I get time this weekend I will finish dismantling the left-hand front suspension, decide whether or not the crossmember-end on that side is good enough to leave alone for a while, and make a start on cleaning up all the front suspension parts and the Wolseley brakes.

Sunset over Pendle

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:14:09 GMT

This was the sunset as seen from the back window of our house here in Burnley a couple of weeks ago. The picture hasn't been photoshopped other than to crop and scale it down for the web. It looked even more spectacular in real life. Pendle Hill is just to the right of the picture.

PS. It's interesting that my spellchecker accepts 'photoshopped' but not 'Pendle.'

Zombiecon membership for sale

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:50:49 GMT

I am selling Zombiecon membership number 9 because I will be in Ireland at the time of the con. It is a full adult attending membership and I paid £41.50 for it. Any reasonable offer accepted. Feel free to pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.

Our House

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:27:44 GMT

I took the day off work yesterday and drove down to Birmingham to meet emmzzi and see Our House, the musical based on the songs of Madness. It was the first time I had ever driven into the centre of Birmingham, and I left the motorway at bang on 5PM. Luckily nearly all of the traffic was heading out rather than in, but working out which lane I needed to be in at each junction/roundabout wasn't easy. I miraculously reached the car park behind the theatre without getting lost, parked up, and wandered off in search of food and a public toilet. The latter proved rather difficult to find - I came across one in a shopping mall that was locked, then I found my way to the railway station because I was sure there was one in there, only to discover that the toilets are on the concourse and you need a valid travel ticket to get to it. While I was in the station I decided to grab some takeaway food from Burger King, then carried on up the escalators and through the huge mall, eventually finding some toilets about another ten minutes walk away. The place was strangely laid out, and it took me another five minutes to work out how to get outside (passing a second Burger King on the way), where I sat down near some interesting buildings and water features to eat my now-cold burger.

emmzzi had arrived at the theatre by this time so I set off back, taking a detour on the way to buy a new parking ticket (it costs £2.50 from 6PM to midnight, but I had arrived at 5:30PM so was forced to buy a more expensive ticket that didn't allow me to park for as long). I encountered three Big Issue sellers, two of them very bouncy and charismatic compared to the ones we get in Nelson (but still not enough to make me buy a copy). Even though emmzzi had texted me to say she was in the bar, I still wandered twice around all the public areas of the theatre without spotting her before phoning to discover she was sitting at a table a few metres away.

The musical itself was really very good. It's a fairly simple morality tale about a lad who takes a girl out on his 16th birthday and breaks into an empty flat to get out of the rain, wrongly thinking this will impress her. The police arrive and the story splits off in two directions, one where he runs and gets away, and the other where he stays to face the punishment for his crime. Musically the songs were good and fit the plot fairly well. We discussed during the interval how they might be going to fit Night Boat to Cairo in, and the link was... inspired. The hero had a rather harsh singing voice but his girlfriend sung beautifully. The cast were all very young and athletic apart from the hero's parents, and the choreography really took advantage of this. Of course the real star of the show was the knackered white Morris Minor convertible the hero buys at one point for £80 to take his girlfriend out in (It says Morris on the door, the GPO owned it before). We had a good time and I would definitely recommend going to see it if you enjoy Madness songs.

There was another incident of lorry-rage on the way home. Entering a single-lane 50MPH section of roadworks on the motorway, the van in front of me slowed down to 50 so I did likewise, maintaining a sensible stopping distance in front of me. The HGV behind me kept on going until he was literally inches from my bumper. If I had braked at all at that point, he would have clipped me. After a few seconds he dropped back perhaps ten yards (still much too close to safely follow someone at 50MPH) and maintained that distance all the way through the roadworks. It's not as if I could have gone very far if I had accelerated as he seemed to want me to do, because I was simply following the van in front of me. Upon reaching the end of the restricted area, the van quickly accelerated up to 70 and so did I. The HGV pulled into the next lane as if meaning to overtake me, only to see me rapidly getting away. This really ticked him off, so he pulled back into my lane and gave me a long blast on his main-beam headlights and spotlights.

Hear My Song

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:58:56 GMT

I've just watched a movie morris1000 lent to me called Hear My Song. It made me very happy. Not just because it features the protagonist and his best mate driving around Ireland in a Morris Minor Traveller, and not even because the protagonist's girlfriend is played by the gorgeous Tara Fitzgerald, who we get to see rather a lot of in one scene. It is simply a really good film that I'm surprised I had never heard of before.

The plot revolves around a failing theatre promoter and his attempts to book Josef Locke, an Irish singer who was very popular here in the 1950s but was forced to flee back to Ireland after failing to pay his taxes. Locke really existed and some of the back-story is based on reality - my mum actually saw him perform under the pseudonym "Mr X" (but was it really him? :). It is funny, light-hearted, romantic, eccentric, and touching without straying into the territory of the formulaic Hollywood rom-com. Highly recommended.

Unfortunately, what it isn't is easily available on DVD in this country. Inexplicably it appears to have only been released in Germany. The disc has the English soundtrack on it but it defaults to the dubbed soundtrack and the menus are all in German. If you do manage to lay your mitts on an imported copy, the trick to getting it to play in English is to select "Sprachen Ton" then "Englische Fassung Stereo" then "Film Fortfahren." If you are unable to get hold of an imported DVD, I couldn't possibly advocate typing something like "Hear My Song" and "torrent" into Google.

What I did this weekend

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:06:49 GMT

On Saturday I drove down to the Gaspodes' place at Aylesbury for the Odyssey 2010 volunteers' barbecue. After food and chat we watched Doctor Who on the giant projector screen, followed by DVDs until after midnight.

Sunday morning I carried on down to Southwold to meet the invaluable, incomparable, ineffable and rarely incoherent morris1000, who also drives a Morris Minor Traveller and will be coming with us on the AIR. On the way there Fenchurch's clutch wore down sufficiently that I was having trouble changing gear, so I had to spend a few minutes lying on my back on the drive adjusting it to take up the slack (modern cars do this automatically I believe). In hindsight I realise I should be checking how much free-play there is in the pedal at each service, as I hadn't done anything to it since I changed the gearbox last year.

morris1000 and I talked about various things (including all the work he has yet to do on his car before the rally!), then went to see some friends of his and had a ride in their immaculately restored Morris Eight. We had lunch in the local pub, went for a bit of a drive around in Fenchurch, then I had to set off back on the marathon seven-hour trek home up the A14, A1, and M62. Total distance covered over the weekend was around 600-650 miles.

Minor update

Mon, 26 May 2008 16:12:00 GMT

Remember this?

For a while it looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

The welds will look much neater after I've ground them down and painted over them. The trickiest part was making the new sill sections. Somebody has previously welded on a new, larger box section under the old rotten sills, and the new crossmember-end repair panel was made to mate up to the genuine sill bottom, so the new parts I made had to slope upwards to bridge the gap between the two different levels. The bit I'm most proud of is replicating the rectangular depressions in the new floor section - you won't be able to see them if I put the carpet back in but I'll know they are there!

The crossmember-end on the passenger side has been similarly bodged but doesn't look so badly rotten yet so I'm hoping to get away with just patching up the hole in the floor above it and leaving it alone until next winter when I plan to undertake a more thorough restoration of all the bits of this car that have been badly bodged in the past.

Meet the latest member of the Holden family

Sun, 25 May 2008 06:54:14 GMT

This is Pippin, our young Yorkshire Terrier dog, who is currently being whiny and attention-seeking because I'm the only one awake at this time on a Sunday morning and I'm not playing with him enough (ie. constantly). I think it's a good name but I didn't choose it; he came with it. Apparently his mother was called Rosie.

AIR update

Fri, 23 May 2008 09:01:21 GMT

I have now booked both the ferry and all my accommodation for the Around Ireland Rally. the_magician and I will be staying in the following YHs:

30th August: Foulksrath Castle (Kilkenny)
31st August: Cork
1st September: Dun Chaoin (Dingle)
2nd September: Sleepzone City (Galway)
3rd September: Blue Stack (Donegal)
4th September: Whitepark Bay (Giant's Causeway)
5th September: Belfast
6th September: Dublin

This bank-holiday weekend I want to achieve several things: research B&B options for those who don't want to stay in YHs, finish off the first draft route plan, produce a progress report and send it out to all the prospective participants, and get on with repairing Lintilla.

With regards to Lintilla, I've decided to try to get her back on the road in time for the National Rally next month. Longer term, the plan is to have both Minors on the road and running reliably by the time of this year's Land's End to Orkney run. I already know Fenchurch is reliable enough to do a long road trip, so I'm thinking of using Lintilla for half or possibly even all of the LEO in order to iron out any problems before the AIR. That way I will have a choice of which car to take, or I could even lend one of them to another of the participants if their car has problems before the trip.

Minor update

Thu, 15 May 2008 07:41:36 GMT

This weekend I gave Fenchurch a service (at 74010 miles). While I was underneath I noticed the exhaust was on its last legs - I poked at the rusty silencer with a screwdriver and it developed a big hole. So I ordered a new two-part stainless steel exhaust from ESM. At £107 it wasn't the cheapest one available, but it is made by GS Exhausts who have a good reputation for quality and offer a lifetime guarantee. The most expensive standard exhaust I found (high-performance ones can cost even more) was £250 from P D Gough, who sounded very surprised that I could get one elsewhere for about £100. I didn't have the heart to tell him there are cheaper imported stainless systems available for £65 and mild steel ones for £40.

The new exhaust system arrived yesterday and I fitted it last night. It seems well made and it went on OK; the only fettling required was to shorten one of the mounting straps by an inch or so. As others had predicted, it is slightly louder than the old mild steel exhaust, even with the rotten silencer. I'm not too bothered (I just turn the stereo up another notch) but some people might be irritated by it. Two good things compared to the old one are the pipe doesn't touch the edge of the hole it passes through in the engine bay, and it has a good downpipe flange that hopefully won't start blowing every few hundred miles.

The plans for my Around Ireland Rally are proceeding nicely. I've put up a web page about it and have had adverts in various places. I'm working on a joint AIR/LEO flyer to hand out at MOT and the National Rally. I have been corresponding with someone from the Irish Morris Minor Owner's Club who has previously done a slightly shorter rally around southern Ireland and is interested in coming on the AIR. A couple more people sound very keen on coming with us but haven't definitely committed yet. Most of my friends list will no doubt be envious to learn that we are planning to visit The Cliffs of Insanity (AKA The Cliffs of Moher, where part of The Princess Bride movie was filmed). I've also decided we will visit Mizen Head and Malin Head (Ireland's equivalents of Land's End and John O'Groats).

The Liberty of Norton Folgate

Tue, 13 May 2008 14:36:54 GMT

I really wish I could go to this gig Madness are doing to promote their new album, The Liberty of Norton Folgate. Unfortunately it wouldn't be very practical because it's in London mid-week - I would have to take a couple of days off work to get to it.

I love the style of the advert, although it could have done with a bit more proof-reading and they have scaled it down too much for the web. "[The Liberty of Norton Folgate] Danced skanked and boggled for the cause of man and woman's need to be." Check out the video too. How many movies do you recognise?

Last Phoenix Ceilidh of the season

Sat, 10 May 2008 11:05:57 GMT

I went to another good Phoenix Ceilidh last night; sadly it was the last one until October. The band were the excellent Hekety from Leeds. Women outnumbered men by a small but significant margin and I think the only time I failed to get a partner for a dance was when I was queueing at the bar.

It quickly got very hot and sweaty due to the warm weather. I was worried beforehand that I might run out of energy due to having given blood the day before, but if anything I felt fitter than I did last month and could probably have gone on for another hour. Slightly bemused that although I still very much regard myself as a novice, more than once people pointed at me and said, "he knows what he's doing," or complimented me on my ability to remember the steps of a dance.

We did one rather unusual and entertaining dance that had something to do with Australian politics - the person in the middle of three rows of three was 'the prime minister' who everyone else danced around and interacted with in various ways, then there was an 'election' and a different row progressed into the middle.

Next Saturday I'm off down to Antrobus for a ceilidh run by All Blacked Up.

May contain Nuts

Tue, 06 May 2008 21:23:13 GMT

I've decided not to buy a ticket for the O2 Arena gig Madness is doing at the end of the year, as I don't particularly want the hassle and expense of going to London for it. I just hope it won't be their only UK gig this year - the language announcing it seems deliberately ambiguous: "The only planned gig in December." The past couple of years they have done a UK tour in December.

How I spent my bank holiday

Tue, 06 May 2008 08:51:19 GMT

On Saturday I drove down to Stratford upon Avon. I saw several traffic jams and accidents on the way, luckily all heading the other way to me. I went straight to the Youth Hostel, oddly having more difficulty finding it than the first time I stayed there (I think the problem was that the address says Alveston but it's not actually in the village). I grabbed a bit of lunch, then set off walking to Stratford (about four miles from the hostel). I'd gone about 2.5 miles when I realised I had forgotten the piece of paper with my theatre booking reference number on it, so I walked all the way back to the car to get it. Having wasted a lot of time already I thought I would drive into town instead, which I did, only to find that it was incredibly busy and there was nowhere suitable to park. The car parks were all full, short-stay, due to lock up early (before the end of the play), or some combination of the three. So I drove back to the hostel and did what in hindsight I should have done to begin with: caught a bus into town from the stop across the road.

Upon finally reaching Stratford, the first thing I did was to locate the cinema and buy a ticket for Iron Man. I had some time to kill before the showing so I went and got an ice cream from a street seller, then wandered around gawking at the huge number of tourists and shops selling Shakespeare-related tat (what must it be like to live and work in a tourist town?). The film was fairly good, only spoiled slightly by the very uncomfortable seat and the inane running commentary from the people sat behind me. I'm not sure it was worth sitting through the very long end credits to see the brief post-credits scene everyone has been raving about though.

Next I walked down to the theatre to pick up my ticket, only to discover that I had somehow lost the bit of paper with my booking reference on it (the one I went back to the car for earlier), probably when I took it out of my pocket in the cinema to double-check the start time. Luckily the box office let me have my ticket anyway after taking my name and swiping my credit card. It was after dinnertime by this point so I went off to find food and ended up in a fish and chip shop near the river before returning to the theatre in time for the play.

The play was a performance of The Taming of the Shrew by The Royal Shakespeare Company at The Courtyard Theatre. It was really very good; easier to follow than Henry V (the last play I saw there) and surprisingly funny. The star of the show was the brilliant Michelle Gomez as Kate (the shrew). The other actor I recognised was William Beck as Grumio. The most confusing aspect of the play was the framing device. A drunk passes out in the street and a noblewoman finds him and decides to play a practical joke by making him think he is a lord. One of the things she does is to arrange for a play to be performed for his benefit - which turns out to be the 'real' play. After a few scenes the fake lord in the outer play suddenly starts playing one of the main characters (also a lord) in the inner play. The main subject matter of the play is pretty controversial now but I think they handled it rather well. I like the theatre (though I didn't get as good a view from the seat I was in this time), the acting was polished, and the scenery and costumes were impressive. I would highly recommend going to see it~~, but it appears that I went to the last show and they are starting on A Midsummer Night's Dream this week.~~ ETA: They are doing A Midsummer Night's Dream and A Merchant of Venice for the next few weeks but Taming of the Shrew returns on Tuesday the 27th.

I walked back to the hostel afterwards. The room I was in this time didn't have the noisy wooden bunks but I still seemed to sleep very lightly and woke up frequently. When it reached 6:30AM I decided to get up and have a shower before breakfast. The Stratford hostel is one of those where breakfast is included in the price (you don't get a choice about this unfortunately). Afterwards I made some sandwiches for lunch and headed off to Kenilworth Castle where people from the Morris Minor Owners' Club web forum had agreed to meet up.

I arrived before they had even opened the car park so I had to go away and park in the village for half an hour before returning. The rally seemed to go fairly well. Three travellers and two saloons turned up, plus three more people in modern cars. There was a mediaeval reenactment event going on at the castle which was rather interesting. One of the things I saw was a demonstration of mediaeval court dancing, most of which looked very dull, but they also threw in a country dance that I recognised from having done it at a ceilidh recently (albeit at about twice the speed with five times as many couples in the circle). After Kenilworth Castle we left in convoy to drive around the area but it was a bit of a shambles as we got split up two or three times. We visited an unusual windmill on a hilltop, then a very old church, before finishing up at the JLH Morris Minor garage to have a look at the customised cars they are working on.

The bank holiday Monday I mostly spent catching up with little bits and pieces of things and not getting very much of note done. I am making good progress with my route plans for the AIR and we may have picked up another participant.

Comic rap song about tea

Mon, 05 May 2008 12:44:52 GMT

Cup of Brown Joy by Elemental and Tom Caruana is hilarious.

I'm off for a cuppa now...

Sometimes you can be too organised for your own good

Fri, 02 May 2008 11:47:10 GMT

I've just found out about a fairly hefty discount available on the ferry to Ireland for people taking part in the Kilbroney classic car show. Unfortunately I already booked my ferry a few weeks ago at the standard economy rate that doesn't allow for cancellations. I just phoned the ferry company up and tried to talk them into switching me onto the discounted rate but they weren't having any of it. On the plus side, this may help to sway some of the people who were previously undecided about coming on the Around Ireland Rally.

London and Poynton

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:59:14 GMT

After work on Friday I drove down to the_magician's place near Heathrow. There had been an accident on the M6 in the afternoon and the matrix signs were still making their proclamations of eternal doom ('long delays J16-J13' etc), but it had all cleared by the time I reached it. Incidentally, the_magician has agreed to be my co-driver/co-navigator/photographer/evening entertainment organiser for the Around Ireland Rally.

On Saturday morning we paid a visit to B&Q, unsuccessfully attempted to fix a leaky central heating pipe (hampered by the fact that the system is so bunged up we couldn't drain the water out of it), and had a look at some loose guttering, before rushing over to fifitrix's house west of London for an Odyssey 2010 committee meeting. I'm not exactly sure yet what I'm going to be doing for Odyssey but it sounds like I will have fewer responsibilities than I had for Orbital. I left at 2:45PM because I wanted to get to Poynton Ceilidh near Stockport when it opened at 7:45 - the website warned us to get there early because they only let a maximum 110 people in.

After a fast run up with only a couple of brief stops and one misread signpost, I arrived at my destination at about 7:55. It turned out that I needn't have rushed because it started off very quiet and never got really busy. Apparently there were two other ceilidhs going on elsewhere that had drawn a lot of people away. It was a friendly crowd with a reasonable mix of young and not-so-young dancers. At the start of the night there were more single blokes than single women but the ratio evened out later on. I sat out the first dance, then on the second one a girl came up and asked me to dance. After that I was lucky the rest of the evening and didn't get turned down once. The dance floor was fairly small and I imagine it could get pretty cramped if they had the full 110 people in and most of them were dancing. I was slightly disappointed that the bar felt it necessary to charge 40p per pint of tapwater, and briefly considered refilling my glass from the sink in the gents. Overall it was a good night with some fun dances. I'm not sure if I'm getting worse at dancing or getting better at noticing when I've done something wrong - some of the early dances were a bit of a mess but they got better as the night went on and people got into the swing of it. A couple of people did comment that I had 'obviously done this before.' I particularly enjoyed a rather silly dance that involved the gents from each set linking hands and dashing around the room to meet the ladies from another randomly-chosen set, then the ladies doing the same, trying to end up with matched sets (as opposed to eg. eight men in one set and none in another) before the next step of the dance.

Poynton is a fair distance away from me (it's actually in Cheshire) and I think the shortest route unfortunately involves negotiating Stockport centre, but I reckon I will go again. While I was there I picked up a flyer for a "Grand Ceilidh" in Antrobus next month - that's even further away than Poynton but it's a decent run, nearly all motorways, so I might go to that one too. On the way back I was feeling rather too smug about the number of miles I've done recently without any problems other than the sticking speedometer needle, so Fenchurch decided to start misfiring and cutting out on the M60 (the Manchester ringroad) while the rev counter went haywire. The engine never quite died completely though and I managed to nurse her the thirty miles or so home. I had a look under the bonnet this morning and found the fault in a couple of minutes - one of the wires to the coil had broken inside the insulation just before the crimped connector so it would have been making intermittent contact as the engine vibrated. I was sure it would be something simple like that - there's no computerised engine management systems to go wrong on these old engines.

Speaking of electronics going wrong, I thought my new 500GB backup disk had died because first it kept freezing, then it wouldn't even spin up. I tried swapping it into a different Firewire enclosure and it worked fine again. Either the enclosure or its power supply has died. I have had it for several years and it always worked fine with the 120GB disk it came with but when I tried putting that one back in it would no longer spin up either. Perhaps the new disk put a greater load on the power supply or something.